Underneath a skyscraper city, there is little time for patience, and few spaces for contemplation. But today in the shade of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney’s own bonsai master is giving a lesson in the quiet art of the bonsai.
Continue reading ““The bonsai responds to our heart” – meeting Sydney’s bonsai master, Megumi Bennett”
Dear Mr. Gorbachev,
Many years and miles lie between you and I, and we do not share language or culture. We are not compatriots, nor was I an anonymous face in the crowds that met you in the world’s capitals. I am, however, both a beneficiary and admirer of your attempt to bring into existence a more peaceful world. So I write to you today, to congratulate you on ninety-one years of life, work, and thought.
Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Gorby!”
Challenging the adage that ‘In India, unionism starts at forty,’ a new generation of Indian workers are taking the reins of union leadership in their workplaces. With some 600 million people under the age of twenty-five, young Indian workers have the potential to transform the way Indian unions look and organise. Continue reading “With “Vivacity and Energy”, Young Workers are Rejuvenating India’s Trade Unions”
“I am of the generation of the Tienanmen Square movement,” Lee Cheuk-Yan tells his audience, “We had the hope of having democracy in Hong Kong because China would have democracy. But that hope only lasted for one month before it was crushed.” Continue reading “Lee Cheuk-Yan’s Lifetime Struggle for Democracy”
“In my childhood I was a really peaceful person,” Tecber Ahmed Saleh remembers. “I was thinking that the refugee camp was the world to me.” Continue reading “Tecber Ahmed Saleh: “Education is the key for our struggle””
To call for peace amidst perpetual war, to stand for equality against the deeply embedded norms of a patriarchal society, and to campaign for diversity within a homogenising nationalist state, these are the great causes for which Naw K’nyaw Paw has chosen to live. Continue reading “The “Karen Flower”: Naw K’nyaw Paw’s dream of peace and equality”
Onto whose face did she gaze: her lover or kin, her faithful or subjects? Why was she so adorned: to accentuate her power; sacred, secular, or sensual? Continue reading “Looking on the Lady of Elche”
The smell of salt and seaweed, the sway of the waves, the cries of the seagulls, the lapping of the water, the wind in the sails and the force of the rudder, the spray on your cheeks and the chill of the air: these are the sensations of the sea through which the blind can navigate; feeling a landscape which they cannot see. Continue reading “The Sensations of the Sea: The Blind Sailors of the Rías Baixas”
“Anything one person can imagine, others can make real”, said the old author of adventure and science. Today, much of what Jules Verne imagined others have made real, from space travel to telecommunications and transport. Drinking from all the sources of science, Jules Verne created other worlds of possibility in his novels, reminding us of and personifying Einstein’s dictum that the imagination is more important than knowledge. Continue reading “With his Head in the Clouds: Jules Verne Visiting Vigo”
Lives and Times 